Pick Order Assignment and Order Batching Strategy for Robotic Mobile Fulfilment System Warehouse

Abstract

This study aims to optimize the order fulfillment process in a Robotic Mobile Fulfilment System warehouse by improving the order batching and the pick order assignment in order-picking activities using a simulation approach. The order-to-station assignment considers the association between the new order and the in-progress order at the station instead of random assignment. The proposed model aims to maximize the total throughput, maximize the pile-on value, and minimize the required number of pods. The proposed model is compared with a baseline scenario. The result shows that the proposed model significantly decreases the number of required pods by 40 %, increases the pile-on by 60 %, and increases the throughput by 4 %. This result proves that the proposed strategy can improve the efficiency of the order-picking process by ensuring every order and/or batch of orders always goes to the picking station with the most similar order.